If you’ve ever watched HGTV, the channel that features home renovation,
you’ve seen “the reveal.” That’s when an
old house has been shielded by a curtain and, when the renovation’s
complete, the curtain is raised and the new house is shown.
Thanks to the toxic politics in Washington DC, we’re seeing
the Charles Krauthammer revealed.
Krauthammer’s a gifted writer and analyst of political
events. He’s viewed as a Conservative,
but an acceptable one: on the Right in foreign affairs and socially Liberal. He holds an enviable position among the
Washington chattering classes. And he
intends to stay there.
Which is why he’s echoing the Liberal establishment on a
subject that is intellectually indefensible: that Trump lied about being wiretapped.
There is no need to even investigate the NSA, the FBI or any
of the 17 intelligence agencies that – among them – apparently monitor our
every moment. The fact that Trump was
wiretapped was written about by the NY Times, the Washington Post and an array
of global news organizations.
As John Nolte wrote on March 24th:
Our
national media has known for months that the Obama administration spied on Team
Trump. This was not only common knowledge within the media community, it was no
secret. In fact, as you'll see below, for two big reasons, the media was
overjoyed that this spying had occurred: (1) they got scoops damaging to Trump,
and (2) in their provincial and cultish minds, the very fact that the oh-so
pure Obama administration felt the need to spy, could only mean Trump was in
bed with Putin.
In
fact, the media was actually having a big public party using Obama's spying.
Hoo-hah here's a scoop! Whee-hee Flynn said this! Woo-woo palace intrigue!
Ha-haaah here's what so-and-so said! Tra-la-la here's what so-and-so did!
But suddenly, when Trump accused Obama of wiretapping him,
the media, who had been reporting for months the phone calls that these taps
had uncovered, denied that there had been any surveillance of Trump and his
team.
They even began using the Bill Clinton defense: “it all
depends on the meaning of is.” They were
trying to maintain that if Barack Obama had not personally snuck into Trump
Tower with wires and alligator clips hooked to copper phone wires it wasn’t Obama
and it wasn’t “wiretapping.”
Nolte demolishes this here.
Trump
Is 100% Vindicated On Wiretapping, and 7 Other Things You Should Know
Yet Krauthammer sides with the people saying Trump is
lying. On March 19th I wrote about Fox’s Special Report where both “A. B. Stoddard and Charles
Krauthammer both stating categorically that Trump’s allegation of being spied
on is false.”
A.B. Stoddard is your garden variety “Democrat operative with bylines”
as Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds puts it, but Krauthammer has a carefully, and well-deserved,
reputation for being smart rather than ideologically correct and must know
better. Here’s what he said (I
transcribed the segment myself from a replay of the program)
“It’s
a farce, you know, the idea that everyone in this town – the media – the
agencies – the congress – are running around chasing their tails on a story
that everyone knows it’s not true, but having to pretend that it might be
because he’s the President when we know how it’s going to end.”
I‘m sorry but this is a farce.
The
logic in inescapable. The only question
is whether the surveillance of Team Trump was really “incidental” or if it was
deliberate, using surveillance of virtually anyone that Trump and his team
could be in contact with as a cover for listening in on Trump’s
conversations.
As Nolte remarks: this was a “successful Watergate bugging.”
I’m also sorry that it reveals something about Krauthammer -
a man with whom I find myself in agreement much of the time. It shows the power of the Washington establishment
that someone as intelligent as Krauthammer is willing to tell lies to maintain his
standing in DC.
That position, for
Krauthammer, is an enviable one: a onetime speechwriter for Walter Mondale, he
has long-running column syndicated by the Washington Post. According
to his biography, He has written for Time,
“served as a panelist for the PBS
political roundtable in weekly basis. For the past decade, Charles has been
commentator and political analyst for Fox News,” appearing almost daily.
I suspect that Dr. Krauthammer really doesn’t
want to buck a bi-partisan establishment that really, really does not want to
open the door to the possibility that Nixon’s “Plumbers” goals of bugging the political
opposition was finally realized by the Obama administration thanks to new and improved
surveillance techniques. The Ruling Class is determined that if the Obama administration committed crimes, they will stay properly buried..
The Krauthammer reveal reveals a lot. It explains why conservatives who get elected
and come to Washington are quickly neutered in contrast to Republicans
at the State and local level who are so much more successful. It explains why so many Supreme Court justices
nominated by Republicans “grow” in office and why John Roberts was willing to
re-write Obamacare so that he could allow it to pass as Constitutional. It explains why the only people who are
willing to stand by Trump are people outside the Beltway who don’t have
Washington DC based careers to consider.
As we get older we learn a lot about family and friends that
show them with warts and all. Each revelation
does not make us love them less, but it shows that mere humans are frail.
Unfortunately Krauthammer’s failure strikes at the heart of
our regard for him as intellectually honest.
That’s sad.
1 comment:
Never thought Krauthammer was much of a Conservative.
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